About

Hello! How are you?

It seems you are curious about me. I'm glad! With no further delay, let me tell you things about myself!

I was always interested in technology, so my whole life reflects that. You will see that in a bit. I am also fascinated by different cultures, history and geopolitics. Thanks to the the multiple trips I took while I was young, I managed to absorb and experience multiple cultures. I also got to see some darn beautiful landscapes!

My Life:

I was born on October 20th, 1996 in a medium-sized town in Brazil. My parents were both very busy but still took the time to take care of me. My mother was renovating her M.D. in Brazil at the time, so she would leave me to my father, which was also busy finishing his thesis.

When I was 3, my father had finished his thesis and got a position at a nearby University, so we packed up, bought a patch of land and built a house. I used to play in there while the construction crew was building it. I bet you can find some tiny hand prints behind some of the floor tiles.

Around that time, I got a little brother. The family had grown and our big house became a very good playground.

But then my nature kicked in.

I was captivated by my father's old computer. I think all the times he held me close to him while he was working on his thesis made me curious about it. So, obviously, when he passed down his old desktop to me, I was ecstatic.

I used to play all those games you could buy bundled on magazines. Educational games, role-playing games and puzzle games. I loved it all. But I still managed to do well at school.

The following years weren't as busy as far as life-details go, but they have tons of travel. So I will bundle them here:

Also, around 2005, I discovered Ragnarok Online, a game I put countless hours in, until I finally put it down on 2012. Later on I would become one of the top player in my region and would hold a spot as top zeny (in-game currency) for months. This is also when I discovered the joy of overnight gaming. That keyboard from the second picture was my trusty companion, until I swapped it for a silent one. My mother was starting to catch me gaming late at night, and she didn't like it.

During that time I also got my hands on Age of Empires 2 and a Play Station 2. That was the first console that I owned. Previously, I would go to my friend's house to play on their NES, SNES and N64.

Nothing too crazy happened after that, just a lot of travels. So, once more, here they are:

Around then I also picked up some art skills. It all started with large drawings on Canson Paper, but eventually I was painting on canvas and even sold some paintings on a local art fair.

My best paintings were also my last. I dedicated them to my grandfathers in Argentina, and my grandmother has them to this day, as a center piece on her living room.

Now, let's get back to traveling:

After that, in 2010, we managed to get a cruise to Antarctica.

And then we missed some warm weather.

A little before this, in 2011, I joined a Technical School, where I studied Industrial Informatics. That was during the night, so I attended high-school in the afternoons and worked as an intern in the mornings. It was the first time I would wake up at 6am and go to sleep at midnight without games involved.

On my second year of doing this, I released a small product, called DoeSangue. DoeSangue was aimed at my local community, and it was a scheduling portal for blood donors. The idea was that the organizers would register and run their campaigns thru it. And the customers would benefit with shorter lines, more accuracy and more information. Our metrics were very interesting and we improved the number of usable blood bags per donation.

Around this time, travels would become less frequent. And work would become more prevalent in my life. This is the last big batch of travel pictures.

In 2013, I also picked up more in the games aspect of programming. I released my first Chrome Web Store game, Zombie Killer, and released a series of YouTube tutorials on Flixel, that showed you how to make platformers and work with action script.

In 2014, I joined the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP, where I enrolled for a Science & Technology Bachelor bundled with a Computer Science Bachelor Degree.

I cleared the basic subjects in the first semester and proceeded to take classes that were required for the Computer Science degree. It was going well, and I even got a scholarship working as a Research Assistant.

During that time I joined three very good developers and a professor to develop a circuit simulation tool called WiRedPanda. My main contributions were UI, Latches and the export-logic for Arduino code.

After contributing to it for a couple of months, I was drafted to work with a Image Processing Library in C++ called BIAL, targeted at medical researchers. I helped to define some texture extractors and helped with optimization.

And once more, I was transferred, this time to another professor, so I could work in an Image Recognition tool called PhenoViewer. We would analyze a batch of images from observation towers in forested areas and extract data from them to help researchers identify patterns.

Unfortunately, near the middle of 2016, my university was starting to lose funding and the infrastructure was suffering a lot from it. I decided to jump ship and move to the U.S. to pursue a dream of mine: Games.

I scouted out the available schools and decided on Full Sail. I also decided that I wouldn't take the Game Development Degree since I was already good in the programming side. I wanted to learn more on the subjective side of Game Development, the design.

I also used a little bit of time before I joined Full Sail to pursue my Italian Citizenship. I took a trip with the family to Italy and we traveled around to find our roots.

We managed to get everything done and we got our passports!

Now, back to Full Sail!

I worked in multiple games, solo projects and game jams, team projects. Most of them were a month-long.

During this time I also formed the skeleton of the group that would later become Stairs Productions.

We worked on a small platformer game focused on slamming you opponents on the ground. Slam Heroes was an interesting project, it was the first time I had dedicated artists, had to let people go, managed big teams and organized sprints in big scale.

The people that went above and beyond, the ones that managed to deliver work and were valuable assets all joined into our company later on.

We then went to some game jams as a team and scouted more members. It was all fun and relaxing, but we had projects to finish before graduating.

We were now working very hard on our racing game, Ruin Racer. It was a ambitious project for a 4-month team, with no artists and no experience in making racing games. I documented all that process in a DevLog and you can see all the problems and issues we faced and how we solved them.

Screenshots from multiple stages in development.

After that I graduated and took some time to travel once more with my parents. It was the last breath I had before finding paid work and becoming a grown up.

At this point, Stairs Productions became a proper LLC and me and the two founders ramp up production on a visual novel called Inside the Mirror. We got funding for it on Kickstarter and are currently working on it.

I also got hired as a Business Analyst for Embraer Executive Jets. My day to day is very close to the one of a Web Developer but I get to go out and talk to other departments to design, develop and deliver good solutions.

While this consumes most of my day, I still work on Stairs Productions projects by night and find the time to take our projects to completion.

On August 9th, 2018 I got married to my wonderful wife, Talita. We also adopted a little kitten called Mavi. I have to say 2018 must be the best year of my life so far.